The Trumpet Child – 4

The trumpet child will riff on love
Thelonious notes from up above
He’ll improvise a kingdom come
Accompanied by a different drum

The way this verse combines musical imagery with theological insight is simply fantastic. It is interesting that the musical imagery conjured up in this song is mostly associated with jazz: two jazz musicians, Satchmo and Thelonious, make an appearance, the song is about a trumpet, and here in this verse there is mention of improvisation. What is the significance of this? As mentioned in an earlier post, Karin and Linford are American musicians. Their music wrestles with the complicated business of being American, and no music is more American than jazz. Accordingly, when they go to make sense of and appropriate the musical strands of eschatological hope found in the Bible, they do so through the lens of jazz music. Jesus becomes a jazz musician, he riffs, and improvises, and plays like Satchmo!

One might object that they are using the Bible for their own purpose, taking it out of its ‘original context’ and loading it with inappropriate meaning. Such a judgment, however, is far too simplistic. A better way to understand what is happening here is to see that Jesus is being allowed to permeate the world in which Karin and Linford find themselves. It is akin to painting a Black Jesus, or an Asian Jesus, or a White Jesus, or making a female crucifix. Such artistic works are not substituting the ‘real’ Jesus for a culturally specific Jesus, but creatively imagining how the ‘real’ Jesus can be portrayed through the cultural idioms at hand. It is an attempt to universalize through particularity rather than abstraction, to show concretely that Jesus is the light of the world, that “in him all things (and peoples) hold together” (Col. 1:17). This sort of creative imagining is what happens in the New Testament. The writers try to make sense of and elaborate on Jesus’ significance, not through some untarnished, timeless set of concepts that offer immediate clarity, but through the very particular language and patterns of thought that are ingredient to their time and place. For an example of this, look at what Paul does in 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11. All sorts of (culturally specific) metaphors and images are being combined to make sense of Jesus. It requires imagination to read the passage.

To be sure, there has to be some norm by which we judge whether our creative imaginings are faithful to what is trying to be imagined. And we must make a distinction between artistic freedom/imagination and theological proposal. Theologically speaking, Jesus is one and only one ethnicity: Jewish. And it is all-important that we hold fast to this. It is only when we take very seriously Jesus’ Jewishness that we can properly depict him as a black man or as an American jazz musician. Why such a stipulation? Because Jesus’ universality (his ability to be depicted and grasped and related to in all sorts of ways) lies in his fulfillment of the promise given to Abraham that through him “all nations will be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). If you base Jesus’ universality on any other basis than the promises given to Israel, you embark down the same road that the Nazis and German Christians took toward what Karl Barth identified as “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit,” namely, antisemitism. Only because Jesus is Jewish is he all-inclusive, only because he comes from Israel can you make him Black or White. The only way to the Gentiles is through the Jews: “Salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22). If you make Jesus anything else he becomes a tribal god.

For the New Testament writers, the norm for their creative imagining was the history of Israel with the crucified and risen Jesus as its fulfillment. For us today, the norm is the same, with the caveat that we have access to this norm only through the prophets and apostles. And the nature of this norm is not such that it requires passive, unthinking assent. The Bible does not imprison us, requiring that we leave our minds at the door. Rather, the Bible sets us free; it occasions new language and creative engagements with everything we find in the world. This is why Judaism and Christianity have always been inseparable from artistic expression. The words of the Bible are restless; they can never simply remain on the page. They demand to be taken up and sung, or painted, or acted out, or put into poetry with other words. Karin and Linford understand this.

What about jazz itself? How does it illumine Jesus and how does Jesus illumine it? Most significantly, jazz is the music of a suffering people. It is rooted in the African-American experience, which has been one of unspeakable suffering. By depicting Jesus as a jazz musician, the song affirms Jesus’ solidarity with all those who suffer. Jesus does not play the music of the oppressor but of the oppressed: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20). But this is no misery-loves-company solidarity. Jazz music is not a woeful capitulation to the oppressor, but a defiant refusal to be defined by the oppressor. Jazz music breaks boundaries, it refuses to be boxed in or predictable, it teaches us that life always finds a way, that love always wins. One group of humans can never completely stamp out the life of another group. The jazz music of the African-American community is a testimony to this.

Jesus, then, as one who plays like Satchmo and Thelonious, is one who refuses the world’s oppression. He does not capitulate to it but overturns it with the irrepressible life he embodies. He is the ultimate jazz musician. He defiantly breaks through the boundaries of this violent world, he improvises a new way, a new creation; he riffs on love in the face of hatred and self-centeredness. This is my favorite line of the whole song. The trumpet child will riff on love. It is packed with meaning and insight, and yet it is so irreducibly beautiful that I am almost afraid to comment on it. How can I make the message of the song any more clear than it already is in this line? The musical imagery and theological meaning of the song reach near perfect unity here.

He’ll improvise a kingdom come
Accompanied by a different drum

These two lines elaborate on the above line. The notion of improvisation has recently gained some traction in the theological community, being used as an analogy for faithful Christian living or discipleship. Christian living is improvisation. We don’t have hard and fast rules to follow, but a person, which requires openness and a willingness to be surprised and change direction. And anyone who knows anything about improvisation knows that it is not an abandonment of any sort of structure, a free-for-all. Improvisation takes place within a structure; indeed, you can’t have improvisation without a structure. Improvisation means positive freedom, the opening up of a set of concrete possibilities, not negative freedom, an aimless wandering. So the analogy is very rich. But here it is applied to Jesus himself. Jesus will improvise a kingdom come. Theologically, this is wonderful language. It points to a real encounter between God and the world, not one that is rigidly predetermined. God’s creation has a life or integrity of its own distinct from God, and describing God’s interaction with the world through Jesus as improvisation gets at this truth in a profound way. We need not take it to mean that God does not know where things will end up, but rather that at every moment God upholds the creature’s freedom. There is real interaction between God and the world, not phony posturing on God’s part. But, of course, God’s interaction with the world is always disruptive. It is always accompanied by a different drum. God respects the creature’s freedom by refusing to let it fall into the bondage it has chosen for itself. The creature will flourish! She will be loved! He will love! And for us who always refuse to give and receive love, who march to the drum of self-interest, God’s kingdom of out-going love comes to us as a disruption.

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